Does this mean I'm now a cover model?

Backbone Magazine has just published a great overview of the cleantech sector in Canada that contains quotes from a number of notable people in the space including Kirk Washington (Yaletown Venture Partners), Victoria Smith (BC Hydro), Rick Whittaker (Sustainable Development Technology Canada), Raul Pacheco-Vega (UBC), Helen Goodland (Lighthouse Sustainable Building Centre) and me. Thanks to the Globe team and Lisa Manfield the author for a great article. You can either jump to the article, to the table of contents of this issue, or to a list of all of the issues.

I’m super excited to be part of the crew (along with Bootup Entrepreneurial Society) bringing the Startup Lessons Learned conference to town via simulcast this Friday April 23rd. For those of you who don’t know, the Lean Startup movement (a derivative of lean manufacturing) was kicked off by Eric Ries, formerly of Imvu. It has blossomed in a very short time into a global movement of entrepreneurs interested in how to build fast-cycle, highly iterative startups that learn fast and minimize wasted effort.

More information on the event is below.

• REGISTRATION: http://sllyvrsimulcast.eventbrite.com/
• PRICE: $25 (regular on-site SF price = $695USD so that’s a 96.5% discount not counting the savings in travel costs.)
• SIMULCAST LOCATION: Bootup Entrepreneurial Society, 3rd floor, 163 W. Hastings St., Suite 200.

Startup Lessons Learned, San Francisco (via simulcast to Vancouver)

Startup Lessons Learned is the first event designed to unite those interested in what it takes to succeed in building a lean startup. The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in embracing and deploying the core principles of the lean startup methodology. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful lean startups.

Confirmed Speakers and Participating Mentors:

• Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (@ericries)
• Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute (@kentbeck)
• Steve Blank (@sgblank)
• Randy Komisar, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Andrew Chen, Futuristic Play (@andrew_chen)
• David Weekly, PB Works (@dweekly)
• Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics (@hnshah)
• Cindy Alvarez, KISSmetrics (@cindyalvarez)
• Ethan Bloch, Flowtown (@ebloch)
• Timothy Fitz, IMVU (@TimohtyFitz)
• Drew Houston, Dropbox (@drewhouston)
• Ash Maurya, WiredReach (@ashmaurya)
• Dave McClure (@davemcclure)
• Sean Ellis (@seanellis)
• Laura Klein (@lauraklein)
• Damon Horowitz, Aardvark / Google (@iamnottweeting)
• Max Ventilla, Aardvark / Google (@ventilla)
• Brant Cooper (@brantcooper)
• Clara Shih, Hearsay Labs (@clarashih)
• Manuel Rosso (@manuelrosso)
• Rashmi Sinha (@rashmi)
• Dan Martell, Flowtown (@danmartell)
• Brett Durrett, IMVU
• James Birchler, IMVU
• Andres Glusman, Meetup (@glusman)

Agenda

• 8 AM – 9:00 Registration
• 9:00 – 9:30 AM Welcome
  *Eric Ries, Host, Startup Lessons Learned
• 9:30 AM – 10:20 AM Build Keynote: “To Agility, and Beyond”
  * Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute
• 10:20 AM – 10:40 AM Continuous Deployment Case Study: WiredReach
  *Ash Maurya, WiredReach
• 10:40 AM – 11:00 AM Agile Development Case Study: Grockit
  *Farb Nivi, Grockit
• 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM Case Study: “But Does it Scale?”
  * Tim Fitz, James Birchler, and Brett Durrett, IMVU
• 11:30 PM – 12:15 PM But What about Design? Minimum Desirable Product
  *Andrew Chen (Futuristic Play), Laura Klein, Dave McClure, Rashmi Sinha
• 12:15 AM – 1:15 PM Lunch
• 1:15 – 2:00 PM Conversation: Getting to Plan B
  * Randy Komisar, KPCB
• 2:00 PM – 2:20 PM Minimum Viable Product Case Study: Aardvark
  *Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz, Google (Aardvark)
• 2:20 PM – 2:40 PM Pivot Case Study: Flowtown
  *Dan Martell and Ethan Bloch, Flowtown
• 2:40 PM – 3:00 PM Pivot Case Study: KISSmetrics
  *Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics
• 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM Afternoon Break
• 3:30 PM – 4:15 PM Customer Development 2.0
  *Steve Blank
• 4:15 PM – 4:35 PM Is Customer Development Marketing? Food on the Table Case Study
  *Manuel Rosso, Food on the Table
• 4:35 PM – 4:55 PM Customer Development Case Study: Dropbox
  *Drew Houston, Dropbox
• 4:55 PM – 5:15 PM Customer Development Case Study: PB Works
  *David Weekly, PBworks
• 5:15 PM – 6:00 PM Customer Development Panel
  *Cindy Alvarez, Brant Cooper, Sean Ellis, Matt Johnson

This event is intended for people on the front line of delivering products. If you are a start-up founder, an employee engaged in customer or product development role at a company of any stage, or someone at a large company looking to bring the lean startup methodology to your company, we encourage you to attend the event.

Local Simulcasts

For those outside of the Bay Area, we will be offering simulcasts of the event. Official simulcast hosts can be found below – make sure to sign up using one of the links below:

Africa

• Cape Town, South Africa http://sllconf-capetown.eventbrite.com

Asia

• Tokyo, Japan http://startuplessonslearnedtokyosimulcast.eventbrite.com

Europe

• Barcelona, Spain http://www.eventbrite.com/event/638921030
• Birmingham, UK http://sll-birmingham-uk.eventbrite.com/
• Bucharest, Romania http://sllconf-bucharest.eventbrite.com/
• Budapest, Hungary http://sllbudapest.eventbrite.com
• Cambridge, UK http://startuplessonslearnedcam.eventbrite.com/
• Copenhagen, Denmark http://sllconf2010copenhagen.eventbrite.com/
• Delft, Netherlands http://sllconf-delft.eventbrite.com/
• Edinburgh, Scotland http://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=652392323
• Gothenburg, Sweden http://gotsllconf.eventbrite.com/
• London, UK http://www.meetup.com/agile-entrepreneurship/calendar/12944310/
• Madrid, Spain http://www.eventbrite.com/event/640820712
• Munich, Germany http://www.eventbrite.com/event/650629049
• Timisoara, Romania http://www.meetup.com/The-Timisoara-Agile-Software-Meetup-Group/
• Vienna, Austria http://at.amiando.com/sllconfstream.html

North America

• Atlanta, GA http://atlantasll.eventbrite.com/
• Austin, TX http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13090413/
• Boise, Idaho http://sllconf-boise.eventbrite.com/
• Boston, MA http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Circle-Boston/calendar/13093640/
• Boston/Cambridge, MA http://dplc-lessons.eventbrite.com
• Boulder, CO http://sllconf-boulder.eventbrite.com/
• Chicago, IL http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13056515/
• Cleveland, OH http://startuplessonslearneduniversitycircle.eventbrite.com/
• Cleveland, OH http://sllsimulcastcleveland.eventbrite.com
• Grand Rapids, MI http://startupgr.eventbrite.com
• Los Angeles, CA http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13082783/
• Monterrey, NL México http://www.eventbrite.com/event/654293008
• Montreal, QC Canada Chttp://leanstartupmontreal.eventbrite.com
• New York, NY http://dplny-lessons.eventbrite.com/
• New York, NY http://www.meetup.com/lean-startup/calendar/13102326/
• New York, NY http://sllnyc.eventbrite.com
• Omaha, NE http://sllconf-omaha.eventbrite.com/
• Providence, RI http://sllconfprovidence.eventbrite.com
• Provo, UT http://wsg-lsc.eventbrite.com/
• Raleigh, NC http://www.meetup.com/lsc-rtp/calendar/13161035/
• Redmond, WA http://www.eventbrite.com/event/648075411
• San Juan, Puerto Rico http://startups.eventbrite.com/
• Toronto, CA http://startuplessons-toronto.eventbrite.com
• Twin Cities, MN http://www.meetup.com/Twin-Cities-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/12849312/
• Vancouver, BC Canada http://sllyvrsimulcast.eventbrite.com/
• Washington DC http://www.meetup.com/DC-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13068744/

Oceania

• Syndey, Australia https://s.eventarc.com/event/view/597/entry/startup-lessons-learned-simulcast-conference
• Wellington, New Zealand http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Wellington/calendar/12624714/

South America

• Belo Horizonte, Brazil http://sllconf-bhz.eventbrite.com/
• Buenos Aires, Argentina http://buenosairessll.eventbrite.com/
• Florianópolis, SC, Brazil http://www.meetup.com/Floripa-Startups/calendar/13090194/
• Santiago, Chile http://sllsantiago.eventbrite.com

• April 23: next screening session.
• April 30: early registration deadline (save $100)
• May 18: Angel Forum event.

See Bob’s information below:

Looking for Investors?   April 30 deadline for 27th Angel Forum on May 18.

30 Companies are invited to present and exhibit to pre-screened 60+ private equity investors at the 27th Angel Forum on May 18 in Vancouver. Nearly 90 investors came to the last Angel Forum, despite the economic crisis.

5 companies already selected with 13 companies in screening. April 23 – next screening session.

“The Angel Forum is about the best organized event I have attended (ranging from across Canada and the Pacific NW). And having the drumbeat going before and after is a real difference from most other events.” Christopher Procyshyn, CEO Of VanRX Pharmasystems.

Post Presentation: To drive investor investment in your company, our Investors-Only discussion right after your presentation, invites investors to join or start a term sheet/due diligence team specific to your company. We link you (via deal management software) with investors who tell us of their interest in your company.

Avoid the last day rush: Earlier applicants have a better chance of being selected as 2x as many companies usually apply than space available and selection closes when we reach maximum capacity. Review our home page and selection criteria before submitting your Company Profile here

April 23 – next screening session. Save $100 by registering before April 30 deadline.  Apply / Register here

Sponsors:  Business Development Bank – Venture Capital      Fasken Martineau        PricewaterhouseCoopers    TSX – Venture Exchange

Questions? Reach Bob Chaworth-Musters, Angel Forum-Vancouver at mailto: bob@ANGELforum.org

I’m quite excited about the work that Boyd Cohen and his wife Elizabeth Obendiente and the team are doing and happy to see that they’re getting the coverage they deserve. They have a great article written about them on Care2.com’s site. You can read the article here. In it you can learn all about how they are helping Latin Americans build cleaner community-centered kilns that help clean up the air, prevent health issues, and also return funds to the village from the sale of the carbon credits. It’s slow but necessary work.

Speakers include: Eric Ries (founder of the lean startup movement), Dave McClure (the foul-mouthed, opinionated, and obnoxiously right-most-of-the-time angel), the KISS metrics team, Randy Komisar (VC/angel with Kleiner Perkins and author of my favourite book on venture capital – The Monk and the Riddle), Steve Blank (who recently wrote a fantastic blog post called “No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers” and many others. This is a top-tier collection of speakers.

This is going to be a kick-in-the-ass day that is going to make any startup entrepreneur rethink their entire business approach.So if you’re sick of limping along building your business 10 users at a time or “working to get the app just right before we launch”, get yourself and your team down to this event.

Sign up HERE. This event is $700USD in person. We’re providing the simulcast here for $50 FREE. Do it. You won’t regret it. And you’ll get to hang out and meet a bunch of other startup entrepreneurs who are all building their ventures. Great place to connect with like-minded folks.

This is truly awesome and inspiring as a creative work.

Apr 6-12, 2010 edition

I’m glad Curt got my favourite line in there, courtesy of Vancouver’s world-famous sci-fi author, William Gibson: “the future is already here, it just isn’t widely distributed yet.” True in many domains, including cloud computing.

Not the best article I’ve had, not the worst. More accurately, when I worked at Business Objects, I worked on collaborative software, web 2.0 strategy, and also SUPPORTED the Saas business unit by providing additional market research capacity.

As usual, this article doesn’t clearly articulate the overlaps between Saas and cloud but I’m not surprised. That’s hard to do at the best of times. My version of that has always been that cloud is now being broadly defined in three columns and three layers so the whole grid is “cloud”, column 1 is “true public cloud” and the box in the upper left corner is “true Saas”.

In Curt’s defense, it was the middle of the Olympics and he was surrounded by much more interesting work.

Since Business in Vancouver doesn’t offer permalinks to their articles (see above line!), I’ve copied the whole article here below:

Cloud control growing for more businesses

Companies that service and use the shared computing model are growing in step with the technology

Curt Cherewayko

It’s probably been four years since Troy Angrignon last had a conversation about building a desktop-based application, let alone built one.

At that time, he was an emerging technology strategist with Business Objects, where he helped build the company’s first Software-as-a-service (SaaS) unit and do market analysis for the unit’s first product.

That Angrignon’s title included the word “emerging” reflects that SaaS and “cloud computing” are relatively new concepts.

But while SaaS and cloud computing aren’t ubiquitous in business yet and while there’s still confusion about what the cloud is, Angrignon and other IT professionals agree that the cloud is growing.

“The future is here,” said Angrignon. “It just isn’t widely distributed yet. All software should be built as SaaS. There’s no reason to do it otherwise.”

Angrignon, who co-chaired a day-long cloud computing conference in Vancouver last month, is now an independent IT consultant.

In its simplest form, the cloud is a mish-mash of remote applications, platforms and infrastructure connected to their users by an Internet connection.

Whereas enterprise or desktop-based software is housed in its user’s local hardware and servers, cloud computing applications are typically based in data centres that can be hundreds of miles away from the user.

And the businesses that manage and maintain cloud software can be hundreds of miles away from the data centre and their clients.

Businesses on either side of the cloud computing model – the providers and their customers – are growing in step with the cloud, as providers advance cloud technologies and more businesses adopt such technologies.

Sarah Morton, president of Backbone Systems, likens cloud computing to a co-op program in which member benefits increase as the co-op grows.

While many of Backbone’s clients are small and medium-sized businesses, they’re part of a cloud computing co-op that’s powered by thousands of other organizations.

Backbone clients use the same programs and computing power as some of the largest international corporations.

Morton added that “business are sharing a large enterprise infrastructure and paying a smaller price for it.”

And as they scale up, businesses can access more services and computing strength in the cloud as needed.

Discovery Parks retired its desktop software and internal network and moved to a SaaS model largely because it didn’t want to have to hire a dedicated IT professional to manage its IT as its real estate portfolio grew.

Mark Betteridge, Discovery’s executive director and CEO, estimated that such a professional would command an annual salary of roughly $50,000.

Instead of updating and maintaining its software, licences and firewalls itself, Discovery pays a monthly fee to Backbone to manage those tasks.

Previously, if Discovery had network or software complications, it would have to hire an outside IT troubleshooter and suffer through what could be days of downtime.

“With Backbone, they can diagnose it almost immediately and fix it almost immediately,” said Betteridge.

Backbone houses its customers’ servers and networks in a Vancouver-based data centre.

The company, which bundles and manages products for clients, launched its first product, a remote e-mail and business application offered by Microsoft Corp., in 2006.

With 10 employees, Backbone now manages software and applications for more than 1,000 employees in numerous organizations.

In 2008, Mono County, California, and the Town of Mammoth, which is in the county, were using enterprise systems to manage land development and sustainable growth.

The two governments’ small and aging in-house systems had become increasingly dysfunctional as the resort community’s population grew.

“We were faced with significant growing pains,” said Nate Greenberg, GIS co-ordinator for the town and county.

Last year, the two governments switched to web-based permitting platforms managed by BasicGov Systems Inc. after being referred to the Vancouver company by another government.

Greenberg said BasicGov’s platform has reduced government infrastructure and the number of staff hires needed to handle increased pressure on their permitting systems.

He added that staff can access the web-based platform from any location that has an Internet application.

As well, the single systems replaced a patchwork of in-house systems that often couldn’t communicate well with each other.

“That allows for really smart decision-making ability because people in one department can see what people in another department are doing,” said Greenberg.

Like Morton, Greenberg pointed to the strength-in-numbers benefits of cloud computing.

“With the power of all those people buying into it, we can leverage much larger functionality than we could have locally.” •

cgc@biv.com

This article from Business in Vancouver April 6-12, 2010; issue 1067

Business in Vancouver (www.biv.com) has been publishing in-depth local business news, analysis and commentary since 1989. The newspaper also produces a weekly ranked list of the biggest companies and players in a wide range of B.C. industries and commercial sectors, monthly features and industry-focused sections that arm its subscribers with a complete package of local business intelligence each week.

With that as a backdrop, it’s interesting to see CIBC announce this week that they have built a new cleantech specific team that will be offering a range of services to the cleantech sector. Related to this I saw this morning that RBC Capital has just funded the Greenscape Capital team (sponsors of Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room exercise here in Vancouver back in March). This will let the Greenscape team execute on their plan to build the world’s “greenest parking facility.”

Congrats to CIBC for finally doing what the European banks have been doing for years and to RBC/Greenscape for continuing to move things forward on large scale efficient buildings.

Firstly Apple announced that the whole iPad thing was just a big April Fool’s joke. Those crazy kids.

Kleiner Perkins doubled down by increasing their iFund from $100M to $200M. Clearly, they didn’t hear about the aforementioned joke.

Apple is getting ready to tour people through the iPad with the oddly named “Meet Your New iPad” sessions. Surprising nobody, the marketing communications people are gushing that it will be an close look at “the most amazing features of iPad.” I’m pretty sure there will be lots of talk about “amazing magic” and “magic amazingness” in there too.

At 8:19am this morning, CNet wrote about the big names unveiling iPad apps including Netflix and EA. Then at 10:47am, Google announced that the Gmail team had released an HTML5 Gmail web app for iPad. Then a couple of hours later, InformationWeek’s Eric Zeman bitterly complained that the entire software universe had not yet instantly released new updated apps, particularly calling out uhhh…Google for not doing so. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Continuing on the market-readiness theme, there are rumours that the iPad will launch with 1000 iPad-specific apps. Meanwhile Apple has begun to create a list of websites that are iPad-ready. So far there are four. That leaves only 75 zillion left to update/catalog. Take that Adobe.

Speaking of Adobe, since Apple hates Flash, they need to line up organizations on their side of the fight. Seems like so far, they’re getting some bruisers into the game. CBS ABC, NYT, CNN, Sports Illustrated, Reuters, Vimeo, Hulu, Netflix, and MLB.com are all saying “screw you Adobe, we’re with Apple and HTML5.” Must be awkward at meetings when the NYT is asking for discounts on Adobe software.

The beleaguered magazine publishing industry launched their opening experimental salvos with a mix of free/freemium/paid offerings. Leading the pack in silliness was the Wall Street Journal with their offer of a $17.29/mo subscription. I’m not sure if that’s horrendous or brilliant. From a margin perspective, I suppose if they can get it, they’re laughing.

CNet finally beat the Onion news by writing the single best article on those creepy weird people who sleep in line-ups to buy first release products. Nice work CNet. Boo on you Onion News.

Mashable showed us how board games might be a killer app of sorts for the iPad. Finally, no need to dig those dusty boxes out of the top shelf in the spare room when the family comes over!

WordPress managed to build what I think might be the most useless app so far: a blogging app for iPad. I can’t imagine trying to build hypertext rich articles on the iPad. What a nightmare. I write my posts with 2 or 3 windows open and 2 monitors. Trying to do this in a single app with no multi-tasking would be horrific. Interestingly the almighty, ever-present and usually lucid Om Malik wrote a post titled “Why iPad will Change Blogging for me” in which he made the case that he wasn’t really sure it would and counted the many pains he could envision. Maybe he wrote that post on the iPad and that led to the cognitive dissonance.

Meanwhile in me-too land, a number of soon-to-be-forgotten players launched a number of indistingushable iPad alternatives. I’d give you the link, but really, why bother?

That’s the week that was on the eve of the launch of the iPad. Tomorrow a new era dawns.

Oh wait, there’s an iPad v2 coming with a camera? And multi-tasking? Okay, then maybe THAT’S the dawn of the new era.

Vancouver’s First Cloud Camp is in two more days!

What will you do at Cloud Camp? You will learn how to take advantage of cloud computing to do things you could not do before, to save money, to be more flexible and agile. You can get your questions answered about security, privacy, and compliance. You can learn about and understand the differences between public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid clouds. Hear from your peers who are building and developing on the cloud about how they have stopped buying and installing and maintaining physical servers.

CloudCamp is a free full-day “unconference” where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place where we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing.

End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to attend and participate.

We’d like to ask your help to spread the word. You can do that by:

• Sharing us on Facebook
• Letting your LinkedIn contacts know you’re attending the event
• Tweet about us using the hashtag #Cloudcamp or full phrase “#Cloudcamp Vancouver”
• Email your friends and invite them to come.

The URL for sign-ups is: http://www.cloudcamp.org/vancouver.

Sign-up closes Friday night at midnight

Details are below as a reminder:

DATE/TIME: This Saturday March 13, 2010, 9:00am

LOCATION: Discovery Park, 887 Great Northern Way (map)

COFFEE and LUNCH is provided and/or feel free to bring your own.

COST: FREE! (bring your friends!)

AGENDA: (this may change)
9:00-9:30am Registration
9:30-9:45am Welcome & Intros
9:45-10:00am Lightning Talk
10:00-10:30am Unpanel
10:30-11:00am Organize Unconference
11:15-12:00pm Session 1
1:00-1:15pm Lunch
1:15-2:00pm Breakout Session #2
2:00-3:00pm Breakout Session #3
3:00-3:30pm Wrap-up Session
Evening – ad-hoc dinner/drinks somewhere??? (at your own expense!)

We would like to thank our sponsors who have made this event possible.

Venue: Discovery Park
Gold: RightScale, Backbone Systems
Silver: Peer 1, Tropo, Agreement Express, Layer 7
Media/Promotion: Bootup Entrepreneurial Society, BCTIA, TechVibes

Thanks from the Cloud Camp Vancouver team.

WANT.

More info here.

And if you’re interested in cloud computing, please remember to sign up to attend the full day Cloud Camp Vancouver being held on March 13 at Discovery Park on Great Northern Way. I’m co-hosting it with local cloudies Trevor Orzstynowicz and Jenny Yang, both of whom are building cloud companies here in Vancouver.

Kevin Kelly tells the epic story of technology from the birth of the universe until now.

Then Bill Gates asks for his one big wish for humanity’s technological development: an energy miracle to help the poorest 2 billion people on the planet thrive.

Thomas L. Friedman wrote an excellent post over here at the NY Times pleading with the climate folks to go on offense with a simple 50 page grade six english report on the state of the world. It’s awesome. Read it. I agree with all of it and particularly getting rid of the phrase “global warming” because idiots then say “well it was warm today here in Arizona so Al Gore is OBVIOUSLY a lying idiot.”(sigh)

Key quotes are below:

What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

At the same time, they should add a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics — and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense. The physicist Joseph Romm, a leading climate writer, is posting on his Web site, climateprogress.org, his own listing of the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change for anyone who wants a quick summary now.

Here are the points I like to stress:

1) Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.

The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

2) Historically, we know that the climate has warmed and cooled slowly, going from Ice Ages to warming periods, driven, in part, by changes in the earth’s orbit and hence the amount of sunlight different parts of the earth get. What the current debate is about is whether humans — by emitting so much carbon and thickening the greenhouse-gas blanket around the earth so that it traps more heat — are now rapidly exacerbating nature’s natural warming cycles to a degree that could lead to dangerous disruptions.

3) Those who favor taking action are saying: “Because the warming that humans are doing is irreversible and potentially catastrophic, let’s buy some insurance — by investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit — because this insurance will also actually make us richer and more secure.” We will import less oil, invent and export more clean-tech products, send fewer dollars overseas to buy oil and, most importantly, diminish the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.

4) Even if climate change proves less catastrophic than some fear, in a world that is forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people between now and 2050, more and more of whom will live like Americans, demand for renewable energy and clean water is going to soar. It is obviously going to be the next great global industry.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Global Weirding Is Here – NYTimes.com.

It allows all of the stakeholders to have a dashboard that lets them input their goals, and then track their progress towards those goals.

Congrats VS team and City of Berkeley on the launch!

]]> http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/02/17/city-of-berkeley-launches-their-climate-action-plan-using-vancouver-based-visible-strategies-see-it-wow/feed/ 0 http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/02/17/how-to-optimize-your-saas-revenue-streams-rackspace-saas-cloud-2010/ http://www.troyangrignon.com/2010/02/17/how-to-optimize-your-saas-revenue-streams-rackspace-saas-cloud-2010/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:18:40 +0000 Troy Angrignon http://www.troyangrignon.com/?p=970 I found an awesome PPT deck today called How to Optimize Your SaaS Revenue Streams – Rackspace SaaS & Cloud 2010.

Its authors Lincoln Murphy and Justin Pirie do a great job of articulating the high level difficulty of building a Saas play and explain it in simple terms. Great 100,000 foot view.

It really is THIS hard.

Earlier Schmidt used his first ever keynote speech at the world’s largest mobile phone trade show to give the industry a call to action, suggesting that telecommunications companies should embrace the new world of smartphones and cloud computing, not fear it.

He said high levels of connectivity and cloud computing – the idea that devices can be made smarter by relying on the computers on the internet to carry out complex tasks such as voice recognition – have brought the industry to a turning point.

“The confluence of these three factors mans something very fundamental is happening. A phone is no longer a phone, it’s your alter-ego,” he said. “It does not think as well as you do, but it has a better memory. It has a more accurate idea of where you are. It can take pictures better than we can remember things.”

He said Google is switching to a ‘mobile first’ model, with more and more developers thinking first about how the applications and services they have created will work on a mobile device.

“Culturally it is time to figure out a way to say yes to the emergent new services and ideas that will not come from Google but from those literally millions of companies and programming shops that will be built on this new platform.”

“Now is the time for all of us to get behind it. What I would suggest to you here, right now, at Mobile World Congress is to understand that the new rule is ‘mobile first’; mobile first in everything.. it’s time for us to make mobile first the right answer.”

I like that phrase: “Mobile First”. I think I’ll use it.